Search engine optimization (SEO) is today’s go to form of marketing for businesses looking to build their online presence and more importantly, their business. There are many factors, both on-site and off that factor in to your rankings.

Optimizing your website’s title is one of the most practiced forms of on-page SEO and is an extremely important ranking factor. In this blog post, I am going to go over some fairly simple, beginner tips to properly optimizing your site’s title tag and hopefully, increasing your organic search engine presence and rankings.

1. Choose the proper keywords: keyword research is one of the most crucial steps to optimizing your website. The right keywords will improve traffic and conversions while the wrong keywords will have your site coming across as misleading to visitors. Take your time conducting keyword research and revisit your research frequently to adapt to search trends, changes in your industry and other factors that may influence the way someone searches for your business.

Make yourself a list of researched keywords that pertain to your business. Keep this list and update it whenever you conduct new research. You can also use this list as a way to track keyword rankings and other metrics.

2. Don’t overdo it: the last thing you want to do is stuff every keyword under the sun into your pages’ titles. Understandably, you want to rank under a variety of key phrases but there are right ways to go about doing so. In my experience as an SEO, I find that one or two phrases per page title works best. Don’t overdo your keyword selection either. Be reasonable in your selections and understand the amount of time you will need to spend to get each one to rank.

A clear and concise message will go a long way.

3. Include a call to action: your title is one of the first things a searcher is going to read so make your title count. In addition to your main keyword(s), try to include a call to action in your title. Blending your keywords with a call to action in your title is sometimes a little harder but is certainly doable.

Let’s take a look at the following example:

You own a pumpkin farm called Benny’s Pumpkin Patch and are optimizing a page on your website that focuses on giant pumpkins. You conducted extensive research and for this particular page, you decide the two main key phrases to target are going to be “giant pumpkin” and “giant pumpkins for sale”.

As I stated above, a clear and concise message is going to go a long way so we can construct a title that reads like this: Giant Pumpkins for Sale | Buy Your Next Giant Pumpkin at Benny’s Pumpkin Patch!

In this example, we are telling the searcher to buy their next pumpkin from our pumpkin patch. This is a subtle call to action and blends right in with your targeted keywords. Give searchers a reason to choose your ad over your competitors’ ads.

In conclusion, don’t forget to optimize your website’s title! Choose the right keywords, keep it simple and create titles that are inviting to your potential customers.

About the author: Craig Kilgore is an SEO at Mainstreethost, located in Buffalo, NY, specializing in online marketing and business development services. You can reach Craig on Twitter @ckilgs or via email at ckilgore@mainstreethost.com.